Babysitter
by The Die Hard
Summary: An old friend of Martha's spends an afternoon making mud pies with little Clark. Secrets are not the same as lies. Coda - Jonathan gets a little more respect.
1. Default Chapter

Not for profit, not for infringement, not for suing. Pure speculation, purely for fun.  
  
Babysitter  
  
"Um, honey, in case you haven't noticed, I'm bleeding to death here."  
  
Martha loved her husband dearly, but there were times she just wanted to slap him senseless. However, after having the combine nearly cut his leg off probably wasn't the best time. She went back to punching through her phone list with a vengeance.  
  
Clark's four-year-old eyes were terrified as he held on with his full strength (far stronger than she could have done, Martha thought, still dazed by the thought, even though she was pretty close to shrieking terror herself) to the compress on his dad's bloody leg. She had gone into automatic mode while she applied the tourniquet and bandage, trying not to throw up at the sight of her husband's mutilated leg. Clark had taken his cues from her -- not screaming, not crying, simply doing what she directed. The alien child was at least as scared as she was. But he did what needed to be done, as if he had been a farm hand as long as Jonathan had.  
  
Martha had swallowed her own nausea to set a good example. "Do we dare take Clark to the hospital with us? Or leave him here alone?" Clark had been very apologetic about the milking machine. Jonathan had spent a long day in the field thinking about a child, who barely came up past his knees, who had crushed stainless steel in his hand. By accident.  
  
"No. No." Jonathan closed his eyes. "Whatever, honey. Just hurry."  
  
"Don't be hurt, daddy," the small voice whispered.  
  
Jonathan managed to lift his hand to the boy's head. They'd already discovered that the child-soft skin could turn a knife, and that open flame meant the same thing to him as warm dirt did. (As in, So?) The tiny child was all but invulnerable. (There had been episodes of screaming terrified curled-up agony here and there, but neither of them could figure out why, or what was causing him to be suddenly horribly sick and then perfectly okay again five minutes later. Duh, the boy had showed up in a meteor storm with a spaceship. Where's the rule book?)  
  
"It's just for a little while," he said faintly. "The doctors will take care of me, and I'll be back home and fine again in a few days."  
  
"Don't leave me." The little boy put enough pressure on Jonathan's leg that he grunted.  
  
"I will never leave you," Jonathan said as firmly as he could manage. "I just have to go get fixed up. Like the machines." Oh hells, now Clark was going to think of his parents as breakable, like the machines that shattered in his hands. The kid was still so scared to be left alone that he wouldn't go to the bathroom by himself. Wherever he was from, whatever he was, he had obviously been sent away and abandoned. "It's," he pronounced the word carefully, "Maintenance."  
  
"Mane-tane-ance," Clark repeated dutifully.  
  
"That's right. Like putting oil in the tractor."  
  
"Oil?" Clark touched the seeping blood doubtfully. His other hand absently continued to provide a tourniquet that no human being could have matched.  
  
"People oil." Jonathan tried to muster some amusement through the fact that he had, indeed, lost an awful lot of blood, and was in serious pain, and going into shock.  
  
The child sitting next to him was from another planet. Match THAT for shock.  
  
"I don't unner-stand," Clark said doubtfully. "Is that one of the other-people things?"  
  
"No, honey." Martha put down the phone. "Your daddy is hurting. That's why he's not making much sense. You remember when you feel hurt? It's hard to think when you're hurt, right?"  
  
Clark shuddered. "Hurting is bad."  
  
"Yes, it is. That's what the word means. Now, can you help me carry your daddy to the car? I need to take him to get fixed."  
  
"I can carry daddy," Clark said confidently, and lifted Jonathan as if he were a kitten. Martha and Jonathan exchanged horrified, terrified, amazed looks. Jonathan took the easy way out by fainting. Martha kept a smile plastered on her face, and her eyes frozen on the picture of a four-year-old carrying a full-grown, 220-pound man.  
  
The beat-to-hell Volkswagon came screeching into the Kent farm just as Martha managed to settle Jonathan on to the back seat. Martha fought the blood pressure spike, not to faint herself. If Jane had seen Clark casually handing her husband over....  
  
Clark scowled at the orange and rust beetle. "Who is that?" he demanded, paranoia already ingrained by eighteen months of living on Earth.  
  
"That's a friend of mine, Clark," Martha said gently. "She's here to make sure you're okay while I take your daddy to get fixed up."  
  
Clark gave her a look that said as clearly as words, take care of ME? "What about...?" he said cautiously.  
  
Martha really seriously wanted to put her fist through a wall, but she didn't want to give her adopted son any ideas. Her husband was bleeding to death, and her extra-terrestrial child was terrified. "Just be a good boy," she said urgently, catching him up in a hug as tight as she could manage. Which he probably barely felt, she reflected unhappily. "Jane is just here to make sure there's no big problems while your daddy is getting fixed up." Turning to the short woman in torn-up shorts and stained t-shirt, she added hastily, "Jane, this is our son, Clark. I told you about adopting him. He's kind of -- special. Just give me a call at the hospital if the house burns down or anything, okay? I have to go now if Jon is going to keep his leg."  
  
"I know, I got the picture. Get gone." The red-gray-haired woman shoved Martha hard enough to stagger her. "We'll get along. Don't worry. Any kid of yours is a kid of mine."  
  
Jonathan chose that minute to throw up blood. That got Martha moving.  
  
The car tore out of the driveway -- Martha had learned to drive in the city -- and Jane sat down in the dirt beside the smudged preschooler. She held out her hand gravely. "Hi, Clark. I'm a friend of you mommy's. My name is Jane."  
  
Clark looked at her suspiciously. "I'm supposed to call grown up people by the other name. Mommy says that's po, polite."   
  
"Well, your mommy is right." Jane sat back, stretching. "But your mommy is a good friend of mine. And my last name is long and hard to say. So you can just call me Jane."  
  
"Oh. Okay." Clark sat down with her. "Why is your last name hard to say?"  
  
"Because I'm not from this country, Clark. Do you know what that means?"  
  
"Yeah," Clark confided. "I'm not from here either."  
  
"Yeah? Where are you from?"  
  
"I dunno. A long way away. Where are you from?"  
  
Well, duh, Jane thought, the kid was barely old enough to be speaking English as a second language. They probably never would tell him want country he'd been adopted from. Though he looked pretty Anglic. One of the ex-Soviet countries? Not with those eyes, she bet. "I'm from a place where people were fighting," she said gently, as befits talking about war to small children. "My mommy and daddy left to get away from the fighting. And I came here, and met your mommy, when we were little girls. We used to play in the dirt together." Jane picked up a clod of dirt, and dropped it in Clark's lap. He looked alarmed until she chuckled at him, at which point he giggled back. "What kind of games do you like to play, Clark?"  
  
"Playing in dirt is fun," he said, with eyes so soulful that beagles would have traded places. "Mommy and daddy don't let me do it."  
  
Not because he got dirty, but because he broke the water main the last time he played dig-a-hole against Scout, their sheep dog.   
  
"Well, I won't tell if you don't. Let's make some mud puddles. And roll in them."  
  
Clark looked alarmed. "I can't." Jonathan had given him a Very Serious Talk for coming through the door covered with mud. THROUGH the door. Proud of himself. At about thirty miles an hour.  
  
"Why not? Do you get sick?" Martha had mentioned that the boy was -- well, the phrase she had used when she had called Jane in a panic was "JaneHelp JonathanDamnNearCutHisLegOff And I Can'tTrustAnyoneElseWithClark." He didn't seem to be retarded, despite his evasiveness with words, and he looked healthy enough. Though appearances, Jane knew too well, could be deceiving. She looked healthy enough herself.  
  
"Sometimes." Clark seemed cautious about that admission, as if he'd been told not to talk about it. "Not from mud. But daddy gets mad when I get dirty."  
  
"Ooh-ooh." Jane nodded. "I bet you went into the house all muddy."  
  
"Um. Yeah." Daddy had also told him not to talk about the door. There was so much he wasn't supposed to talk about, he couldn't keep it all straight sometimes.  
  
"Well, that's because your mommy likes to keep her house all neat and clean. Mud is for OUT side. So long as we stay OUT side, we can get as muddy as we want. But we have to get cleaned up before we go IN side."  
  
The boy considered that, frowning in concentration, then he nodded. "That makes sense." As opposed to so many other things that didn't make sense, like why bother with so many things that broke so easily.  
  
"So let's make some mud pies. Would your daddy mind if we used the rain barrel?"  
  
"Nah." Clark's actual facility with English, owing to a near perfect memory and a processing speed that would have fried an EEG, was coming back as he relaxed a little around the new lady. Clark actually was reading on a third-grade level already, which was just one more thing that mommy and daddy had told him not to talk about, which confused him even more. "It's got mosquito larvae in it. Daddy was going to dump it out today anyway."  
  
Jane blinked. A kid too young to be speaking English as a second language very well had just said "mosquito larvae."   
  
"Well, since your daddy isn't going to be doing any heavy work until his leg gets better, we'll just save him the trouble and do it for him, okay? That way we'll actually be helping him. And we can have some fun at the same time. And he never even has to know that we were having fun. We'll just say we were helping."  
  
The kid's grin could outshine the sun. "I can keep secrets!"  
  
Jane laughed and they went to go tip over the rain barrel. Jane let Clark pretend to help. She was astonished at how easily the hundreds of gallons of water went over. Even with her still-trained gymnast's muscles, she had expected to have to brace herself and give it the same kind of effort that a big farmhand like Jonathan would have had to put into it.  
  
Several dozen mud pies later (Jane had allowed Clark to eat one -- she and Martha had eaten mud pies too, although it had been a rather higher quality of mud, and Jane knew enough sports medicine to understand that humans were tougher than usually believed), Clark declared, unbelievably, that he was bored with mud. Jane looked them both over critically. "We're too dirty to go in the house. What else do you like to play outside?"  
  
Clark looked down and toed the mud. Most of what he liked to do, like race the dogs and jump the fence, was on the "don't tell anybody" list. "I dunno."  
  
"Would you like to learn some new tricks?" He was a little young for gymnastics, but teaching the kids was about the only thing that made her life worth living any more.  
  
Clark looked at her warily. "Only if it's an other-people-can-do-it trick."  
  
Now what the hell did THAT mean? "Well, SOME other people can do it. Some of it takes a lot of practice, though. If you don't like it, just tell me, and we'll think of something else to do." She stood up, and stretched, and did a fast front roll in the mud, coming back to her feet on her toes out of long habit. She smiled at Clark. "The easy way is to start on your hands and knees, like this." She demonstrated a child's somersault, collecting more mud.  
  
Clark narrowed his eyes. Jane did not know, of course, that she was dealing with an eidetic memory and rather more than human sensory capability. "I like the first way better," he decided, and copied her motions exactly, from the stretch to the upright stance.  
  
Jane forcibly shut her mouth before it collected flies. "That's, that's very good. Did your mommy teach you that?" Martha had been a fair-to-middling gymnast herself.  
  
"No." The boy's eyes retreated again, as if he were scared of having done something good. "I just did what you did. Is that an other-people trick?"  
  
Okay, we are going to get to the bottom of this right now. I can't babysit this kid if I keep scaring him. "What do you mean by 'other-people'?"  
  
Now the kid definitely looked terrified, and on the verge of bolting. Jane put out a hand to catch him, not knowing how close she came to losing her arm. "Clark, don't be afraid. I told you, I come from another country. Sometimes I have problems understanding. Can you help me understand? Pretend you have to talk to me like I don't know what you're saying."  
  
Unknowingly, Jane had hit exactly the right chord. Clark's spaceship's programming in Earth languages had been pretty rudimentary. He could get by in any language extant for the last hundred years, but not well, and not comfortably, and he was as aware of what he couldn't do as of what he could.  
  
Clark still looked scared, but not terrified. "I'm not like other people," he mumbled.  
  
Jane sat down in the mud. "I'm not like other people either, Clark," she said gently.  
  
Clark's eyes went wide. "You're not?" he said gleefully. "Are you like me?"  
  
"No." At Clark's crestfallen look, she shook her head with a sad smile. "You're a little boy, and I'm a grown woman. How could we be like each other?"  
  
"Oh." Clark went solemn, and nodded. "I didn't think about that." With a shy sideways look, that might have been a child's attempt to sneak information he wasn't supposed to have, "Can you do things? That other people can't?"  
  
Does coming in fourth in the Olympics count? Does surviving three years after the doctors had given you six months to live count? Does having to pull the plug on your own two-week-old son count? Yes, she could definitely sympathize with not being like "other people." The question remained, though ... how could such a little boy know about the isolation of being so different, and having so much you just didn't talk about, no matter what country he came from? "Yes, Clark, I can do things most people can't. Want me to teach you some of them?"  
  
"If I don't get in trouble," Clark said, habitual caution coming back into play.  
  
"I don't think you'll get in trouble for learning new things." Jane stood up. "You did good at a front roll. Let's try a cartwheel."  
  
Not surprisingly, Clark stunk at cartwheels. Hand-hand-foot-foot is a matter of careful coordination, and no amount of strength will make up for the fact that young children are still learning right from left and up from down. (Clark would stink at cartwheels for the rest of his life, have no inherent appreciation of up from down. Fortunately, Batman and Robin and Nightwing never challenged him to a gymnastics contest.)  
  
Jane swallowed hard when the four-year old mastered an aerial somersault on the second try. She'd been showing off, not expecting anything except his delighted "Whee!" She had never heard of a child that young with the strength to do it himself.  
  
Clark had trouble with back rolls. Also not surprising, Jane had always had a hard time getting her head out of the way herself as a child, and had learned the handstand version to get around the problem with training. Fortunately Clark was still too uncoordinated to manage a handstand-flip back roll, or she would have been in for another rude shock. As it was, his attempt landed them both back in the mud puddle, with much laughter.  
  
There was a low branch on the tree just around the barn that was perfect for demonstrating how to get your head out of the way. Jane showed him how to do a balance-beam back roll, and then, after cautioning Clark that balance beams were for "sissy girls, not boys," steadied him in mastering the art. She was pretty sure Clark took some damage to the between-the-legs area on the first few tries, but he didn't complain.  
  
And then she did something very, very stupid, unknowingly, but stupid. She was living on borrowed time, she didn't much care about herself. But she should have been thinking about the little boy she was babysitting.  
  
Jane jumped from the lower branch to a higher one, caught it in an easy kip, swung around, and did a back-flip dismount, staggering only a little when her knees gave. Oh, for the good old days. Teaching the kids was all that kept her going. It hurt to move much, any more. But damn if she was going to quit.  
  
In front of a child, with a perfect physical memory and no concept of being injured.  
  
Clark concentrated on the branch she had caught, replaying her motions to himself, smiled happily, and jumped.  
  
With a small child's coordination, and superhuman strength.  
  
Jane didn't have time to scream before Clark hit the branch.  
  
The CRACK! of the branch breaking covered the "Oof!" Clark made as he hit it, but not his shriek as he landed on the ground and it fell on top of him. Jane made it to his side in less than a second, more scared than she'd ever been in a fairly unpleasant and challenging life.  
  
Clark was sitting up, his face contorted with tears and fear, staring at the tree. "Uh-oh," he whispered.  
  
Not "ouch." Not cries of pain. A look of terror. A ripped shirt. A hundred-pound or so branch that he had unthinkingly pushed off of him as he sat up. No blood. A small "Uh-oh."  
  
Okay, we are OFFICIALLY going to get to the bottom of this.  
  
"Clark." Very firmly, the tone she used with her own doctors. "Are you hurt?"  
  
The wet and terrified face he turned to her said that he would have run and hidden if he could have quit trembling long enough to get his feet under him. She folded him in her arms instinctively. She didn't care if he could have -- as she was beginning to suspect -- done her some serious injury. (The rain barrel. The aerial flips. The tree. Marty, just how far away did your adopted son come from? I don't think they raise them this strong even in Siberia.)  
  
She'd never been able to even hold her own son. She wasn't about to let this one go.  
  
"It's okay, shh, don't worry," she murmured, along with similar nonsense words in six other languages. "It's not your fault. It was just a rotten old tree branch. The only thing that matters is that you're safe. You're a brave little boy. Just be more careful. It's okay."  
  
"You won't tell?" Clark sniffled and wiped at his eyes.  
  
"You think I would tell your mother that I was clumsy and silly?" Jane ruffled his hair. "And dumb? No way! We can put that old branch over there in the wood pile, and no one will know what happened. We're just helping out while your dad has a hurt leg. Right?"  
  
Clark thought about that for a long time. Technically, it was a lie. Mommy was always telling him not to lie to them. But he had to lie to other people. But Jane was mommy's friend. Jane was asking him to tell a lie to mommy. It was confusing.  
  
"Do we have to lie?" he said in a small voice.  
  
"Clark. I am the grown-up. I will tell your mom the truth. It was my fault. You don't have to worry, and you don't have to lie. You didn't do anything wrong. You just tried to do something you weren't ready for yet. Like the cartwheels, right?"  
  
Clark relaxed a little in her arms. "I'm not very good at cartwheels, am I?"  
  
Jane hugged him. "No, you're not. That's an other-people trick."  
  
Clark managed a small chuckle. "Are there lots of other-people tricks?"  
  
"Oh yes. Many many. You'll learn some when you grow up. Some of them you never will learn. But that's okay too. You're a boy and I'm a girl, remember?"  
  
"Yeah, I know. Daddy's a boy and mommy's a girl. Daddy can't cook worth a damn."  
  
Jane gave a shout of laughter. "Now that, Clark, is something you should not say in front of your mommy and daddy. I will keep it a secret. Along with the mud pies."  
  
"Daddy says it all the time."  
  
"Your daddy is a big boy and you are still a little boy. And some boys can cook. Just not all of them. Some boys do other things, like grow the food, or make the machines." Clark decided that was simple enough, nodded, and snuggled, seeking comfort. Jane grew contemplative for a minute. "Almost everyone does not-like-other-people things, did you know that? Everybody has something they're good at, and something they're not good at. Not everyone can do cartwheels, or cook, any more than they can be real strong and real tough."  
  
"Not supposed to tell," Clark muttered into her shirt.  
  
"You're not supposed to say 'damn' either, little one. Don't worry. It will be easier to understand when you get older."  
  
"Like daddy?"  
  
"Exactly like daddy. Although he does things he shouldn't sometimes too. Like, I bet he did something dumb to get himself hurt."  
  
Clark sniffled for a moment at the thought, but then got himself together the way he had seen Martha do under pressure, and gave her a small smile. "Mommy says daddy does stupid things a lot of times." Conspiratorily: "She says he's stubborn."  
  
"I bet he is. But he doesn't tell you about the stupid things he does, does he?"  
  
"No. Mommy does. When she's talking to herself." Clark did not know he wasn't supposed to be able to hear Martha's subvocal commentary, because she had never known he could hear it to tell him that he shouldn't talk about it. But then, most children hear things they aren't supposed to, so that wasn't particularly suspicious.  
  
Jane snickered. "Your mommy always did talk to herself, even when we were little girls. I would ask her what she was muttering about, and she would say "nothing." Which was sort of a lie, right? But it was more like just something she wanted to keep to herself. A secret. Something personal."  
  
Clark tilted his head, and this time Jane had a pretty good idea what he was thinking about. Secrets. Lies. Being a baby from very far away. Being lectured by that stubborn preacher-wanna-be farmer that she couldn't believe Marty had married. Being doted on by her old friend, the smart popular girl whose life had fallen apart, who had never let anyone else except Jane into her painful secrets, and that only because she knew that Jane -- her real name determinedly left behind during her escape from the massacre -- understood about having parts of your life that you'd really rather never talk about.  
  
Clark, she was pretty sure, already understood that he had secrets to keep, and already didn't like having to think of himself as a liar.  
  
She leaned closer to him. "Secrets are different from lies, you know," she said, mock sotto voce. "Lies are what we tell people if we've done something bad. Secrets are what we keep to ourselves because they're nobody else's business. Does that make sense?"  
  
Clark frowned, considering. "Like saying we're helping when we're playing?"  
  
"We're helping AND we're playing. It's nobody' else's business if we're having fun while we help. We're not lying. We're just not telling anyone else that we're having fun while we're doing good." Marty, I am going to send you a tape of Mary Poppins, see if I don't. If the kid turns out to be able to fly with an umbrella, well, it's your fault for not warning me.  
  
Clark finally accepted that and nodded, smiling that sun-bright smile. "So it's okay to keep secrets. Secrets aren't really lies."  
  
"Well, you'll have to get older and ask your dad about that. It's complicated."  
  
The smile vanished, replaced by a worried look. "How?"  
  
Jane berated herself for that offhand comment. She wasn't about to try to go into that topic, no matter how quick the kid was. "It has to do with politics, honey. Something you don't have to worry about until you're old enough to vote."  
  
"Oh." The boy's face cleared. "Daddy says all politicians are damn liars."  
  
Jane threw back her head and laughed again. "I bet he does. And he's pretty much right. But you're not supposed to say "damn," Clark. That's a big-people word, not a small-people word. Just like there are other-people things. You can do things I can't do, and I can do things you can't do, and your daddy can say things you shouldn't say. You can say them when you get old enough to vote, okay?"  
  
"Can I say all the other-people things when I get old enough to vote?"  
  
Jane looked into his eyes, very seriously. Can you, kid? Can you ever tell anyone just how special you are? Just how "not from around here" you are? "When you're old enough to vote," she said seriously, "then you're old enough to make your own decisions. You can decide then. Until then," she grinned at him, "I will keep it a secret that you said a big-people word, because it didn't hurt anybody, and it's nobody else's business, okay? And you can tell daddy about it yourself when you're old enough to vote."  
  
Clark nodded solemnly. "Then it won't be a lie. It will just be a secret for awhile."  
  
"Yeah." For the rest of your life, child. If what I'm thinking is anywhere close to the truth, I hope to hell no one else ever finds out. "We can keep secrets. Like the mud pies. And the cartwheels. And all the other-people things. Until you're old enough to vote." She hugged him, and Clark threw his arms around her neck, face beaming.  
  
The championship gymnast blessed her trained muscles and lungs for preventing Clark from suffocating or crushing her.  
  
Clark lifted his head. "I hear the car. Is daddy okay?"  
  
How am I supposed to know? And what does he mean, he hears the car? I don't hear any car. And how does he know which car? Marty, you and I are going to have a LONG talk about this "not like other people" business. "I'm sure he is. He'll probably be sleepy and tired for awhile. Maybe he'll let us help do some of the work around here until he's better, huh?"  
  
"That would be fun. Then we could get all dirty and mommy wouldn't be mad, because we'd be doing real stuff."  
  
"That's a good idea! Since we're all dirty already, let's pretend we're doing some work when your mom gets home." She pointed to the broken tree branch. "Want to help me carry that over to the wood pile?"  
  
She was holding herself very carefully as she said it. The kid was obviously terrified of letting anyone know that he was, what was the proper word? unusual. But he also obviously honestly wanted to do whatever he could to help. It must be terribly hard for him, to be so capable and not be allowed to show it.  
  
Worse, maybe, than the secrets she had kept to herself all these years, about the war, and the failures, and the child who should never have been born.  
  
Clark measured her with his eyes, then nodded. A four year old bearing a burning secret. Jane smiled at him hopefully, encouragingly, hoping he couldn't read minds as well.  
  
"I can do it myself," he said finally.  
  
Martha drove up to the house just in time to see a dirt-covered Clark carrying a branch ten times his size over to the wood pile. And a dirt-covered Jane was watching him with her arms folded. "We'll have to break it in half to make it fit," Jane remarked critically, at which Clark frowned, nodded, and cracked the two-inch-thick piece of wood in half like a twig.  
  
Jane applauded. Clark beamed at the approval. Martha thanked God that Jonathan was still in the hospital and drugged out of his mind.  
  
Jane turned around as if she'd just noticed the car coming up. "Oh, hi, Marty! How's your man? He looked pretty tore up, but he's a tough guy."  
  
"He's okay." Martha got out and submitted to a yell of "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" and an embrace that nearly broke her spine. "He'll be in the hospital overnight, but if I know Jonathan, he'll have caused so much trouble by tomorrow afternoon that the nurses will be begging to get him out."  
  
"Yep, sounds like your man. Obviously your boy here takes after him."  
  
Martha went very still, and Clark gave her a worried look. "Was Clark any trouble?"  
  
"You mean, aside from trying to teach him cartwheels? Don't enroll him in my gymnastics class. The other kids would have a fit." Which could mean any number of things, Martha thought. "We'll just keep up with the private lessons, if that's okay with you."  
  
"Can I, mommy? I can do a somersault real good already." He demonstrated.  
  
An actual somersault is one of the aerial maneuvers. Martha gulped.  
  
"Very good, Clark," Jane said calmly. "Be careful how you land. Land on your toes, balance, and roll back on your heels. It looks better that way."  
  
"Show me?"  
  
"I'm kind of tired right now. Maybe tomorrow, when your mom goes to pick up your dad."  
  
"Okay. Mommy, we dumped out the rain barrel for daddy too. He said he was going to, anyway. We just got a little muddy." Clark tried hard to look apologetic.  
  
"It was my idea, Marty. It looked like it was about to hatch some mosquitoes. Clark just helped." She gathered the little boy into a hug, and felt that incredible strength when he hugged back. "Clark is quite the little helper. You must be really proud of him."  
  
Martha caught the quietly warning tone in her old friend's voice, though it was too subtle for the child. She hoped. "Yes, we are. Of course we are." Clark's face lit up, and he hugged her again. Martha made a note to buy more aspirin.  
  
"He's the best little boy anyone could want," Jane said softly, fondly. She had never told Martha what happened to her own son, but she suspected that her old friend knew. Martha had been the lucky one, never being able to conceive in the first place. Not having to carry hope for three-fourths of a year. And have to sign the papers to allow him -- it -- what little and awful bit of it there was -- die.  
  
Clark caught Jane's hand and tried to hug both women at once. The farm woman and the athlete both bit their lips to keep from protesting the crushed muscles. Martha met Jane's eyes worriedly, and saw the knowledge there in her reassuring smile.  
  
"I'll be happy to babysit your boy any time." Jane leaned down and chucked Clark under the chin, smiling, determining to do whatever it took to stay alive long enough to keep Martha from having to find any other babysitters.  
  
"Just don't expect us to tell you about everything we get into." She winked at Clark. "We're good at keeping secrets, aren't we?"  
  
The boy's grin was far brighter than the sun.  
  
______________-  
  
Shout-out to LaCasta here, whose "First Encounters" was so much fun that I couldn't help but want to play. 


	2. Babysitter three days later

Babysitter, Coda

A/N: All of the credit (and none of the blame) for this one goes to GinaRenee, whose review was a kind and inspirational nudge. Jonathan really does deserve better.

To everyone's surprise, Jonathan was released from the hospital after only three days. Jonathan was astonished (and disgusted) that he'd had to stay that long. The surgeons who had pieced his leg back together were astonished (and disgusted) that he'd managed to get himself released so quickly.

The nurses, for various reasons of their own, were evenly divided on whether they were sorry to see him go or couldn't get rid of him soon enough.

Martha was equally parts grateful to have him back home with her, and worried that he would injure himself further in his inevitable attempt to push himself too much and too fast. The older Ross boys had volunteered to help out at the farm while Jonathan was laid up, but Martha and Jonathan both knew that he would fret anyway.

And Jonathan fretting was like a case of poison ivy. Everything anyone attempted to do would only scratch at him and make it worse until he was completely back on his feet.

Martha had, with no little trepidation, called Jane again. "Actually, I could probably take Clark with me when I go pick him up, I mean, it shouldn't take that long..."

"Marty, don't you dare. I know hospitals all too well. You'll be hung up for six hours while some paper-pusher finds the last form that has to be signed, that they just ran out of, and the custodian with the key to the supply room happens to have gone on vacation. Besides, I promised to teach Clark some more gymnastics tricks."

Other-people tricks, she added to herself with a smile, having adopted the boy's charming phrase for being, well, different.

So when the rust-and-primer-colored VW made its way down the Kent farm road ruts more sedately than during its panicked arrival three days before, all parties concerned were looking forward to the meeting this time.

"Hi, Jane!" Clark ran out the front door with a bang. Jane and Martha both winced; mortal woodwork was not intended to take that kind of impact.

Clark hugged her around the knees, carefully, and turned to his mother. "She said I could call her Jane," he explained seriously. "Her last name is long and hard to say because she's from a country where people are fighting."

Martha chuckled. "If she says it's okay, then it is," she reassured Clark. "Just remember that that only applies to Jane. You should still call other adults by their last name when they're introduced to you that way."

Jane's echoing amusement was forced. The four-year-old had just repeated, nearly verbatim, something she'd said to him in passing three days ago. This, on top of the impossible strength and toughness she'd already seen him demonstrate.

Marty, when you said he was special, you weren't just using one of this language's careless euphemisms.

She had to make herself look down and smile at him to hide her consternation. Clark was looking up at her with the beginnings of worry, as if she'd missed a cue he was expecting. Or as if he had. "Is it okay to tell mommy about you being not like other people?" he asked under his breath.

And that, while even more disconcerting coming from a child his age, was something she could at least answer honestly. She ruffled Clark's hair. "Yeah, it's okay," she confided. "Your mom already knows all the kinds of crazy I am."

Clark apparently didn't like that word; he frowned. Martha intervened before he could get indignant, or worse, about it. "Jane doesn't really mean 'crazy' the way you see it in books," she explained, taking her son's hand. "She's just - unconventional."

That earned a raised eyebrow from Jane. What kind of books is a four-year-old seeing that has such concepts in it, Marty? "That means 'not like other people'," she supplied.

Clark shrugged, which Jane mistakenly took to mean disinterest at something he didn't understand. In fact, Clark knew what the word meant, though he had not yet matched the spellings that he'd seen in books with the way that a lot of words were pronounced. His parents were in no hurry to correct that, either, since Clark's phenomenal memory made him seem suspiciously smart already.

"Is that because you and mommy were friends when you were little girls?"

Jane already took it for granted that the boy's primary interest was on the subject of being different. "Yep. Your mom is a little on the unconventional side, too." Jane looked back up from him to Martha, grinning, and missed the sharp glance that Clark gave his mother at that revelation. So mommy was not like other people, too.

He liked that idea.

"Hah! Don't let Jonathan hear you say that. He thinks I was really just a country girl at heart all along. I'll never tell who put those articles on organic farming he was so proud of finding there in the county Ag extension center in the first place."

This time Jane did laugh. "You're a character, Marty. Though I'm surprised he went along with it. Jonny doesn't strike me as the type to go in for anything newfangled."

Martha sobered. "You underestimate him, Jin." Even Martha had never learned to pronounce her original name properly, but it didn't bother her. She hadn't thought of herself as anything but "Jane" in years. Martha's occasional reversion was more a childhood nickname than a reminder of the name of her long-gone father's family. "Steadfastness is not the same as refusal to change. Jonathan just doesn't go in for fads. He does go with what works. And he does learn new ways when there's a reason to."

Unconsciously, both women's eyes strayed to Clark. Jane, Martha thought, would never know just how big an adjustment Jonathan had made, taking in an extraterrestrial without further question, once she had made her own feelings - her desperate need, really - clear to him. Jonathan had become the practical one without missing a beat, wondering not only if they had the right to keep this information from the world, but if they were actually the best choices to look after the unknown needs of someone from another planet.

What if Clark, never mind what his real name was, had needed some kind of food they didn't have, or was susceptible to some kind of Earth germ that his people didn't know about? Hell, Jonathan had growled, what if he's allergic to milk? A toddler was in no position to help them with that, and if the loose piece of inscribed metal was an instruction manual, Clark's Federation of Planets or whatever had forgotten to include a universal translator.

And that, oddly enough, had roused Jon's temper when Martha hadn't even thought about it. "What kind of a planet has starships, and sends its children off to an entire other damn planet without so much as a, a coloring book? I don't think I'm going to like these people."

Jonathan had been the realist, and while he never once spoke of or treated Clark as anything other than their own son, he obviously never was lulled into forgetting that the boy was not of their genus or species. He had not flinched once - raised both eyebrows and kept from dropping his jaw by force of will, sure, but still taken it in a farmer's unflappable stride - when the demonstrations of just how large Clark's differences were began.

Martha had panicked, there was no other word for it, when little Clark first proved that formerly unquestioned human limitations simply did not apply to him. Jonathan had been the rock of the two of them - the three of them - simply and unquestioningly accepting this final evidence that their toddler refugee from the stars was not, ever, going to be able to have a normal life. And going on with the day.

Jane, however, did indeed already have some hint of the adjustment to his predictable sod-buster life Jonathan must have had to make in taking in this particular "special" child. That Martha had managed it, despite her dislike of adventures, did not surprise Jane; she knew just how badly her oldest friend had wanted children of her own. But Jonathan? If Jonathan had a defining characteristic, it was "set in his ways."

She wondered what his reaction would be to her being included in on the secret that she was beginning to suspect Martha and farmer Jon had kept hidden in his little defensive world behind the farm fence.

"Okay, I won't tell," she said lightly. "It'll be our secret, just the three of us." She winked at Clark.

Martha looked unhappy for a minute, then caught sight of Clark, his expression momentarily confused, then attempting to wink back. Both women laughed heartily and together this time. "Speaking of the man, I'd better get moving. Jonathan is probably about ready to hit someone over the head with a crutch and hitchhike home by now."

"That part, I can well believe. Get gone. Clark and I will go tip a cow or something." At the flash of honest alarm across Martha's face, Jane added hastily, "Just kidding. No abuse of farm animals, I promise." She had seen Clark break a solid five-centimeter-thick tree limb in half with his small soft bare hands. Even Jonathan would have had to hit it over something. He might very well be able to tip a cow. Jane realized that she would have to be careful what she jokingly suggested around the child.

She also suddenly realized that Martha - and Jonathan - had to live with that kind of caution every minute of every day. Marty, she could believe that of; Marty could be trusted with your most intimate thoughts and darkest secrets.

Jonathan obviously had more on the ball than she was giving him credit for.

She held out her hand to the boy who was worriedly watching his mother in the process of going away, and he backed against her and clung unselfconsciously. Jane's lips tightened. For all his strength and intelligence, the boy had an insecurity complex as big as all outdoors. Had he been not just put up for adoption, but abandoned completely? She wondered what kind of place he must have come from, to be so frightened of being left alone.

Not that she couldn't sympathize. For her, the demon waiting to catch her unawares had been thunder, so much like the sound of guns. At first, city noises were comforting, drowning out the memories of the sounds of dying. But as the city grew larger and more violent, the underlying sounds became less distracting and more disquieting. Finally, when she'd received her own personal death sentence, she'd given up on her adopted big-city home, and gone to see what her old friend had found so attractive about the rural life.

Smallville, not surprisingly, agreed with her. There was a peacefulness here that she wished she had found long ago. Even the meteorite strike hadn't been such a big deal, compared to the all too personal violence of both war and city crime. At least the heavens, even at their most randomly violent, weren't out to get you through a sniper scope.

Her hold on the boy had tightened with the memories. For anyone else that age, her grip might have been painful, but Clark reacted to her fingers digging in by pulling her closer himself. Jane was the one brought back to awareness while they waved goodbye at Martha when her bones protested.

"Oof! Not that I don't appreciate the confidence, little one, but we won't be much help to your dad if my leg is broken too." She started to gently try to pry his hands loose.

Clark released her and stepped back, arms straight at his side, so fast that her fingers never touched him. She blinked. She hadn't even seen him move. And now his expression was fearful again, as if he'd been caught breaking a rule he didn't know existed.

Jane shook her head at herself and knelt. "Hey, it's okay. You didn't hurt me. I have - a disease, in my bones, that makes them not as strong as other people's, so I have to be extra careful. Heh. That's part of being 'not like other people' too, right? It isn't your fault. You didn't know. It's my fault for keeping it a secret from you when I didn't have to. Right?"

Clark looked down, and then his eyes moved up and away, unfocused, obviously thinking far beyond what that simple concept called for. "So ... sometimes keeping secrets makes things worse instead of better?"

And that was pretty deep philosophy for a kid that age. Jane dragged her eyebrows back down and nodded firmly. She ought to be able to handle philosophy with a pre-schooler, anyway. "Sometimes we keep secrets we don't have to out of habit, or because we're embarrassed. It's still not exactly lying, but it doesn't do anyone any good, either. Like, if you asked me if I'd eaten an extra donut this morning, and I said no, that would be a lie. But if you asked me if I wanted something to eat, and I said I wasn't really hungry, but I didn't tell you about the extra donut, that would only be a secret.

"But then," she gaged from his growing smile that he'd figured out where she was going with this, and quite approved, "since you're such a polite little boy, then you wouldn't tell me that you were hungry, and that your mom had extra donuts in the kitchen, so you would be keeping a secret, but then you wouldn't get a donut that you wanted. Is that right?"

Clark's caution melted away at the thought of what mommy had left in the kitchen. "We don't have any donuts," he said, sounding more gleeful, even conspiratorial, than disappointed.

"No?" Jane was just glad to see that terrible rigid isolation leaving him. "I can't imagine Marty - your mommy - with no food in the house."

"We have apple pie," Clark confided. Then, formally and politely, playing by the rules of the game, "Would you like something to eat?"

Jane laughed. "I'm not really hungry, because I ate too much this morning, but you can pretend you didn't hear that, and it will be our secret. You can just say that you offered me some apple pie, which is the truth. Would you like some apple pie, Clark?"

They really ought to find some way to harness the kid's grin, she decided. They could grow hothouse flowers in the open winter with it.

Jane didn't feel too guilty about letting Clark demolish the whole apple pie. She could always tell Marty she ate some of it. Besides, the Ross boys did come over to help out, and ate most of the other one, so they could help take the blame when there wasn't anything left for Jonathan. She did worry for a few minutes that Clark might get an upset stomach from so much sugar, or be picky about eating a more nutritious snack later, but Clark also demolished most of a jar of peanut butter by dipping various vegetables in it, on a dare, without any sign of losing his appetite.

Nor of being in any mood to take a nap. Jane began to wonder about the wisdom of her plot to feed him until he got sleepy just to pass the time. At least he didn't seem to get hyperactive either. The kid had an insulin response so exact - he ate slowly when she admonished him too, then asked politely for more - they should correct the textbook idea of perfect to match it.

Although, at his age, boundless energy just seemed to come with the territory. Jane groaned, sharing the thought of every parent since the dawn of thinking parents that it wasn't fair to waste so much energy on the young.

Okay, what else to do with an active, extremely bright, incredibly strong child nervously waiting for his parents to come home? The Ross boys had already sincerely requested that Clark not be allowed to help with the farm equipment. "He's a super kid, but he breaks even more stuff than that pain in the ass Pete," the older one explained.

Jane could well imagine. Clark was not by nature a destructive child, as far as she could tell, unlike some of the brats she'd babysat. But a preschooler stronger than most adults, without the coordination to control it, could be a real problem. She pitied his teachers when he started school.

Clark was looking at her expectantly. Well, at least he was like all other children in THAT regard. She put her fists on her hips, affected a scowl, and considered the rest of the house menacingly. (From Jack Ross' comment, she was pretty sure that they had no idea how REALLY destructive Clark could be quite unintentionally, and it was probably a good idea to keep him inside while they were working.)

"Hm. Well, when your dad gets home, he's not going to be able to manage the stairs very well. We could bring down some pillows and a blanket for him so he can be comfortable on the couch..."

"I know which ones!" And Clark disappeared.

Jane blinked. The kid had not, quite, literally vanished. She had an impression of his red-and-blue plaid shirt blurring into a streak, and a gust like a breeze had just blown the door open. But the door was shut. And Clark was -

- Standing in front of her again, completely hidden under pillows and a thoroughly disarranged blanket. "These!"

I am wasting my time teaching this kid gymnastics, Jane decided. He could be on the track team as soon as he learns to sign his name.

Aloud, she only applauded. "Very good!" And then, mock stern: "Do you usually go into your parents' room without permission?"

The pile squirmed. "N-no. But I was careful, and..." The small worried face peered from around a pillow. "You won't tell, will you? I didn't break anything, honest."

Her initial impulse to laugh died on an exhaled breath. What kind of child worried first about breaking something? Even abused children had other priorities, and she'd believe Martha or Jonathan capable of abuse about the time their cows sprouted wings.

Come to think of it, the Ross boys had never been ones for exaggeration, even concerning their own personal prowess. Maybe they'd been understating even what they themselves had observed about Clark's accidental destructive capacity.

In which case, maybe there was even more to Clark's "other people" tricks than the unnatural strength and toughness and the unfillable stomach that she herself had witnessed. Oh boy.

"Even if you had, it wouldn't be something I'd scold you over," she tried soothingly. "I wasn't worried about you breaking something, anyway. Accidents happen to everyone. But bedrooms are people's private places. You have your own room, don't you?"

What she could see of the head inside the pile of blankets nodded.

"Well. Right now, you're still a little boy, so your mom and dad can come in there without knocking to make sure you're all right. When you get older, you're going to want to have a private place of your own, that people don't come into unless you invite them in. That's what your parents' bedroom is for, a place they can have to themselves. Do you understand privacy, Clark?"

Clark poked his head the rest of the way out. "Privacy is like secrets."

"Hm. Yes, that's a good way of putting it. A private place is a secret place all your own. You'll have one when you get older. That's not an other-people thing, that's an older-people thing. That's why you shouldn't go into your parents' bedroom without their permission. Or listen in at their door or peek through it," she added, remembering all too many episodes of small children's curiosity getting the better of them.

Clark shifted the blankets around uncomfortably. Don't listen and don't peek, he told himself. One more other-people thing to remember. "I can put everything back so they won't know. Is that all right?"

Jane shook her head, smiling. At least he was just like other children when it came to logic. "I think they won't mind this time, since we're doing it to help your dad. Besides, they'd know that we'd been in there as soon as they saw the pillows and blankets on the couch, right?"

"Uh-huh." Clark took his cue and dumped the pile onto the couch. Then, before she could make any further suggestions, he proceeded to arrange them, with a four-year-old's eye to organization and comfort, and so fast that his arms and sometimes his whole body was a blur.

"That's - " and then he stood in front of her, anxiously waiting for her approval to know whether he'd done something to be proud of or not.

" - Good, Clark," she finished weakly. Great lord. How did Marty and Jonathan keep UP with the kid? The Ross boys' comment about not letting Clark help with the chores notwithstanding, Clark was going to have no trouble running the farm by himself one of these days.

The boy relaxed. Jane's astonishment gave way to redoubled admiration for the job Marty and Jonathan done instilling manners in him. How on Earth did they discipline a kid who was easily as strong as Jon at his football-star best, and to all appearances even faster?

"In fact," she summoned her reserves, "That calls for a reward. But we ate all the pie, and I'm not near the cook your mom is. I do know how to make cookies, though. You think your mom would like us to make cookies?"

You cheat, Jane, she told herself, at the dancing expression in the boy's eyes. What kid is going to say no to that?

"I know where the ingridynts are," he confided.

"I bet you do. I bet you know where everything in the house is, don't you?" Kids are natural snoops, and with his speed... "Clark, who taught you that word? It's in-gree-dee-ents."

"Ingredients," he repeated promptly. His eyebrows drew together, making her want to brush the line between them away. "That's not the way it looks."

"I'm afraid not. A lot of words in English don't sound the way they look. It could be worse, though. It could be French. Or Welsh."

Wait a minute. The way it looks? She already knew Clark's native language wasn't English - but he was already reading? Phonetically? Oboy. Marty, I do NOT envy you and Jonathan trying to keep up with this kid.

Clark, though, had skipped straight past the first part of the paragraph and latched onto the second. "You know French and Welsh?" he demanded happily, pronouncing it exactly as she had.

"Some," she admitted. Welsh had been her mom's idea, but French, well, Jane had grown up with the idea that EVERYONE spoke three or four languages. The American refusal to do so still sometimes annoyed her.

"Teach me!"

"Okay." She grinned. And wouldn't THAT annoy Marty... "Say 'please.'"

"Please!"

"Say it in French. S'il vous plait."

"Seel vu ple." Copying her accent exactly, with no trace of midwestern whatsoever.

"Very good. You'll be Smallville's first cosmopolitan before you outgrow babysitters." Not that she intended to ever let anyone else take her place as a babysitter, if at all humanly possible.

"What does 'cosmopolitan' mean?"

"It means 'man of the world.' You probably shouldn't use that word in front of your dad, though."

"Oh. Is it a big-people word?" Clark usually did not have to be told anything twice, but Jonathan's common vocabulary around the farm was already so familiar to him that he sometimes forgot which words he was not supposed to say.

"Sort of." She'd thought that the idea of teasing Jonathan, by teaching his son to be more sophisticated than he was, would have been more tempting, but somehow she was no longer quite so unimpressed with the man she'd once dismissed as nothing more than a jock and a farmer.

"It's a city-people word, not a farm-people word. That's kind of a hard thing to explain, Clark. Your mom and I, we once lived in the big city. Your dad never did. Sometimes he thinks of us, of you mom and me, as 'other-people' because of that."

Clark thought about that for almost a minute. Jane had the sudden, inexplicable, but frighteningly unmistakable, impression that his mind was working through all the ramifications of that, not like a little boy, but like some kind of - outside observer. Like an ambassador, taking in and processing information about a culture not his own as if it were vital to his survival. Like some kind of -

- alien watcher?

Jane, like nearly every literate person of her generation, had read "Stranger in a Strange Land."

Clark's expression, for that long moment, dredged up nothing so much as her mental picture of Valentine Michael Smith, when he first arrived on the planet of his parent's birth, human in appearance only, Martian by training and temperament, confronted with Earth's endless otherness.

'Other people.' Oh, Marty.

"It would make daddy feel like an other-people to say 'cosmopolitan'," Clark finally pronounced, half-questioning.

"I'm afraid so. And your dad - " oh, great mother, she never thought she would be thinking this, much less saying it - "Your dad shouldn't ever have to feel like an other-people in a bad way. Your daddy is a good man. The best kind of man."

A man who took in a refugee, a stranger from - did they even know where?

Clark squirmed with pleasure. "Daddy works the land. People of the land feed the world. Mommy says so."

"Your mommy is exactly right there." Jane let out a breath she hoped the child didn't notice she'd been holding. She'd stopped believing in any benevolent higher powers as a child herself, but she was beginning to think that she might have to reconsider.

Somewhere, someone or something had to have been looking out for someone as 'other' as Clark, to have delivered him into the hands of the only people she would ever have trusted with such a strange and wondrous child: a quiet unbreakable rebel like Marty - and a man like Jonny Kent.

Staid, she'd always thought. Stolid. Unimaginative.

Well. That last was obviously not applicable. And "unexcitable" clearly had its good points, when your child was a heart attack waiting to happen with every unguarded minute, when anything, even things as simple as learning a new word or doing a child's idea of "helping," demonstrated that he was about as 'other' as people could get.

To have to be careful with everything you said, everything you allowed him to do, every single thing you allowed anyone else to see...

Jane felt a burst of completely justifiable pride, so strong it made her eyes sting, to have been trusted with the insider's experience of the kind of life the Kents were living. Okay, so they'd been desperate, and she and Marty had been closest confidantes since they were not much older than Clark. But the risk, oh holy mother, the risk of having anyone else so much as TALK to the child...

"Damnant quod non intellegunt," she murmured. Oh, would they ever. And Clark's toughness all too manifestly did not extend to his psyche. He had it hard enough, trying to live in a world where he would be forever 'other.' If he were ever to be abandoned again, if this home were taken away from him, he might break completely.

She had fled her birth home in fire and terror, her own father paying in final coin to get her and her mother away to safety, and this land had taken her in without question and made her one of its own.

This land - and people like Jonathan Kent. Jonathan, who had given a child who could never be like him a home. She owed that debt in return, if nothing else and for no other reason, to make sure that Jonathan never had to pay the same kind of price for taking in this special refugee.

"What does that mean?" The small brow furrowed, with a worry she was finally beginning to understand - that every second, he might fail a test, might give himself away as too different to be accepted by other people. Or be thought unworthy.

That, she could understand all too well. She shivered. Childhood was never far enough away for her, in her unguarded moments.

She wondered if it ever would be, for Clark.

"It's an 'older-people' phrase, kiddo. You don't need to worry about it right now. It just means people do dumb things sometimes. Although," an idea for teasing Marty lit itself in her head, and she grinned, "You might say it sometime to your mom when she's being obstinate. Make sure she doesn't have anything valuable or breakable in her hands when you say it, though."

Clark repeated the phrase. Complete with her Balkanized accent, she noted absently. Perfect physical memory, perfect phonetic memory, already reading a second language... Oh, Marty.

Oh, Jonathan.

I don't envy you trying to live up to your child's worship of his father. But I can't think of anyone else better suited, now that I have some clue of what you're hiding. You keep what you really are very well, under that farmer's dirt and gruff stone wall.

"Okay," Clark agreed. "Daddy says that mommy can be more stubborn than all the Kents put together, sometimes."

I am flatly not surprised that this child knows what "obstinate" means. "That she can, Clark. I'll tell you some stories about when we were little girls together, later. When it's time for your nap." Please, mother, let this boy at least take naps. "Right now, weren't we going to make some cookies?"

That sunlight smile, she thought achingly, might even be able to cure bone cancer.

Making cookies went without incident, she decided, if you could count "without incident" as including Clark's tendency to mix dough so fast it was probably half-cooked before they got it onto the baking sheet (singular, because Clark had eaten most of it while it was still in the flour-and-sugar stage - not, she figured by now, that it was likely to hurt him). As advertised, she was nowhere near the cook that Martha was, but she could manage an off-the-internet recipe. Marty's double-handful of cookbooks were mostly beyond her.

(So Jonny Kent liked spicy stuffed green peppers, according to the well-worn and much-stained page the "Southern Cooking" book had fallen open to. Huh. Who'd'a thunk it?)

Until the timer indicated that what was left of the cookie dough they'd managed to get to the oven probably wasn't raw any more, and Clark zipped - no other word for it - straight to the oven and grabbed the sheet with a breathless, "Ready!"

"Clark, n!"

She barely had time to scream before it registered that he was still holding the several-hundred degree (Celsius, Fahrenheit, who cared right now?) metal in his small soft child's hands, still grinning in triumph as he held them out to her.

He should have been screaming, folded around second-degree burns that couldn't be cooled.

(Daddy, daddy! The fire, burning, burning...! Daddy, please stop screaming, please stop screaming...)

"Clark," and she was impressed enough with herself to give herself a silver medal right then and there for keeping her voice steady, "You're supposed to use gloves to protect your hands when you take things out of the oven. Didn't you ever see your mommy use them?"

She hunted around for the hot pads, which at least she had subconsciously known not to call by that name in front of Clark - he probably would have confused the term for protecting hands from heat with the idea of making something hot.

"There." She pointed. "Put the sheet down and put on the gloves."

Clark did as he was told, but his confusion showed. "They're too big for me."

"I know, child, but it's something you have to do. It's," deep breath, voice steady, "It's an other-people thing."

"Oh." His face fell. "I forgot."

You FORGOT that you were grabbing something that should have seared three layers of flesh. Oh, Marty.

Oh, Jonathan. I take back everything I ever thought about you not being good enough for Marty. Forgive me.

"It's okay," she managed, still keeping her voice calm, mostly due to shock. "You were just in a hurry to get to the cookies. But being in a hurry usually causes more trouble than it fixes. You have to remember to always stop and think about what you're going to do."

You, probably more than anyone, will never be able to just do something without having to stop and think about it, child.

Oh, Clark.

"I know," Clark said, subdued. "Mommy and daddy always have to remind me that I - that they - that some things can't - "

And he obviously WAS stopping to think, she realized, and finding that there was no way he could tell her the things that his parents always had to remind him not to do, because he had been told not to ever tell anyone. His frustration at not being able to use the words that he knew and had been forbidden to say was enough to break your heart.

Far worse, though, was what she watched him do next, as his face slid into a blank mask, a defensive hiding too empty on the surface to be called a lie. He had simply buried everything he was, rather than risk any hint of showing what he was not.

"I'm sorry," he said politely. "I won't forget again."

The pain that twisted her heart was too great for curses. She knelt, wordlessly, and held her arms out to the little boy that she had so carelessly taught the phrase "other people" to.

After a few seconds, Clark melted into her arms and held on tight - and for the first time, she could sense that his near-crushing hug was still carefully, so very delicately, balanced between what she felt, and what he could do.

Breaking that tree branch had not been just easy for him. It had been effortless, in the sense that he hadn't had to stop and measure what effort he was putting into it.

He wasn't just stronger than Jonathan at his football best. He was stronger than Jonathan had any way to measure.

Jane rocked the small other-people boy, and fought tears with every bit of emotional strength she had ever had.

By the time the Ross boys came in, they were on the fourth batch of cookies. (Jack ate four, and offered the rest of his portion to Clark. Jane raised an eyebrow. They might not know the extent of the differences between Clark and their own kid brother, but they would never have been so solicitous of Pete.)

Marty came home with Jonathan just after dark, and Jane watched with indulgent bemusement as Clark launched himself at the door in a blur, froze on a proverbial dime and carefully opened the door, then blurred again on his way to the still-moving car.

She hoped distractedly that Marty wouldn't accidentally hit him. She was fully prepared to believe that Clark Valentine Smith Kent could stop a car with his body, and they'd have a hell of a time explaining a boy-sized dent in the car.

She read, and finally understood completely, the expressions on the Kent's faces when the boy hugged them carefully, being so solicitous of his father's cast that anyone else would have mistaken it for distaste, or fear. Well, yes, fear, maybe, but not fear of any strange objects. Fear of himself, his differences, of the harm he could do,

To Clark, everything from grass upward must seem a fearfully strange and fragile object.

She sauntered over to the car to help out, every line of motion in her competition-gymnast-trained body fully aware of what her body language was saying.

**_I know. I've seen him. I've seen it all._**

_**I'm one of you now. Thank you.**_

"Clark, let me help your daddy," she chuckled as he tried to figure out how to put his one-meter height to use. "This is an older-people, taller-people thing." Not that, at a meter and a half, she counted much more towards taller-people herself. "You'll be a taller-people soon, but right now, he needs someone his own shoulder height to lean on." Which she reached, but just barely. "You can carry the bags. Use both hands, okay? Just so it looks evenly balanced."

Clark probably wouldn't have needed two fingers for the small amount of luggage, but any other child would, and she figured it was just as easy to give him an excuse to pretend.

"Okay!" Clark grabbed the bags and disappeared - not quite literally, but almost - into the house, then reappeared beside them, still hovering anxiously around his parents.

Jane's grin felt as strained as the Kents' but for a different reason. Red-hot metal can't hurt this child. Losing sight of his parents for three seconds is more than he can bear.

Marty, can I adopt your son along with you?

She met Jonathan's worried, withdrawn eyes, and her smile shifted. "It's okay." I know, I know. And I'll never be able to tell you how much I appreciate the honor of you trusting me with him. "He was that way about making the cookies, too."

"Oboy." Jonathan grimaced, and she put it down to the effort of getting up the stairs. "Clark hasn't - he wasn't any trouble, was he?"

She studied Jonathan's plain stolid farmer's face, and saw for the first time the power and determination - and fear - he schooled beneath that impassive toughness and easy grin. That's where Clark gets that ability to go so blank, she realized suddenly. He's already learned to hide what he is - just like his daddy.

(Daddy, daddy... Did I learn so much from you? How to give everything you had, when you needed something - like protecting your family, and keeping us safe - badly enough?)

And the child's sunlight smile - that was Jonathan's, too, the side of the man of the land she had so rarely seen, and given so little credence to. He only seemed unimaginative, because he could convey so much with just a quirk of an eyebrow. You saw his temper, and never thought to look for the subtle shifts of mood hiding in the twinkle in his eyes.

Oh, Jonathan. Forgive me for missing so much. And bless me for having finally seen you as you are, through the eyes of a child more **_other_** than I could ever have nightmares of being.

Bless you, Jonathan and Martha, for giving a home to a refugee from a land that has to be even further and stranger than mine.

She met his eyes squarely, and put a hand on his shoulder, stilling him. "Clark is the best little boy in the world. And Jonathan," reading the shift in his eyes, now that she knew what to look for, the determination - and the fear. "So long as I live, he's safe with me."

Jonathan stared back at her for three endless seconds. She had learned as not much more than a child herself to read the faces of judges giving her a 9.5 instead of a 10 in competitions that seemed so trivial now.

She stared back, and read Jonathan's.

Fear. Pride. Intolerance to any threat, of any sort. And love, the willingness to do anything to protect his family.

(daddy, daddy... Oh, great mother, how can spirits so far apart in the physical world be so much alike?)

And when his eyebrows let up marginally, while Martha and Clark glanced back and forth between them nervously, she saw acceptance in his small, pain-edged smile.

It was better than a gold medal, any day.

After Jonathan had been settled on the couch with the remnants of the cookies, and she'd helped Martha clean up the kitchen and start dinner, Martha, not surprisingly, offered a not-quite-wholehearted invitation to spend the night.

To all three of their astonishment (but not Clark's), she accepted.

Leaving Martha and Jonathan some time to themselves, she put Clark to bed and made good on her promise to tell stories about the two of them as little girls. Clark listened wide-eyed, and red-faced from the effort to suppress giggles. When she finally yawned and decided it was time for bed herself, Clark reached out a tentative hand.

"Mommy and daddy are busy," he said softly. "Don't leave?"

Jane glanced automatically towards the master bedroom and smiled at the faint sounds. "Mommy and daddy are having a private time. Remember what that means?"

"Don't peek, don't listen," Clark agreed. Then, softly again, as if he was afraid of asking - as afraid as he was of hurting anything fragile - "Stay with me?"

Jane felt like cursing again, but reverently. "Of course, Clark." A child afraid of nothing, except being left alone. "I promised your daddy," not Marty, she realized, but Jonathan - "that as long as I live, you'll always be safe with me."

Those were better words to be remembered by, she figured as she made up a dozing place beside the small other-child and watched him fall asleep holding her hand, than many a famous person had ever been privileged to say. If her own strange life offered nothing else, it had given her a gift at the end, a trust and a family that no home or team or support group could dream of equaling.

She kept her promise.


End file.
